Bad Habit: God help her

Excerpt

The '65 Mustang purred as Nadine pulled up to Benny's Liquor Store, its neon sign casting an eerie glow over the deserted parking lot. She adjusted her disguise—a baseball cap, glasses, and a prosthetic nose—before grabbing the gun from the glove compartment. It was just for show, she told herself. She wouldn't need to use it.

Inside, she approached the muscular clerk, feigning confusion about directions. Then, in a heartbeat, the gun was out, and she was demanding he empty the till. But $210 wasn't enough. She wanted the safe opened.

"Open the goddamn safe or you'll be in a coffin," Nadine snarled.

The clerk's defiant response and sudden move triggered a reflex. A deafening bang, and he crumpled to the floor. Dead.

As Nadine fled the scene, her mind raced back to her beginnings—abandoned at a nunnery, raised by the kind Sister Anita and the cruel Sister Agnes. Years of abuse had left their mark, a simmering rage always threatening to boil over.

Now, armed with her nun's vows, Sister Anita's cross, and a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Nadine was a force to be reckoned with. But as she sped away from Benny's, she realized her life had taken a turn she never expected.

Little did she know, this was just the beginning of her descent into a world of crime, where her vows as a nun would clash violently with her newfound life on the wrong side of the law.